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Republican state parties are suddenly jockeying for advantage on the 2016 presidential primary calendar, with Nevada hoping to leapfrog South Carolina as the No. 3 contest, and several states, including Texas and Florida, looking to create a Mega Tuesday election on the first day in March.

The rapidly intensifying competition is fomenting some bitterness among the state party chairmen and threatening to complicate Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus best-laid plans to move up the GOP convention to June 2016 to avoid a brokered nomination and bring order and fairness to the way the GOP selects its nominee.

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The biggest concern has always been pricing grass-roots candidates out of the race, South Carolina GOP Chairman Matt Moore said. It will clearly be expensive to compete after February.

Even as his own state tries to move up the calendar to mid-February, Mr. Moore worries more about the impact of the changes being contemplated for March 2016, when several states hope to slide their contests forward to become more relevant to the outcome.

It might help an extremely well-funded candidate who doesnt need to reload following South Carolina and Nevada, Mr. Moore said in one of several Washington Times interviews with state party chairmen.

It is not lost on GOP officials what this means for 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney and for Floridas Jeb Bush, the son of one former president and brother of another.

Should either run, Mr. Romney and Mr. Bush are among the few perhaps the only potential candidates who, from the instant they announce their candidacy, could count on more than enough financial largesse from major donors to compete effectively in all of the most expensive states.

Even so, its not clear that any candidate could emerge as the de facto nominee after mid-March or even after the Republican National Convention convenes, probably in late June, some fear.

A Southern Super Tuesday followed by a Midwestern Super Tuesday between March 1 and March 14 would, under RNC rules, mean that every state party participating would award its delegates in proportion to the percentage of the total vote each candidate received in that state.

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Republican state parties jockey for position on 2016 presidential primary calendar